It’s safe to say we’ll put the pandemic behind us before too much longer. Either we’ll learn to live with it via more effective testing and treatments, or we’ll have one or more vaccine options, or some combination.
What isn’t safe to say is that life will return to the way it was before the pandemic. Digital alternatives in too many areas of our lives have moved to supplant in-person alternatives, often in productive and useful ways.
For example, it’s going to be very difficult to convince many workers that they should resume commuting by car five days a week, and dealing with traffic jams and lengthy commutes now that they’ve learned to become more productive holding video meetings from home and spending that commuting time with their families. Just as it’s going to be difficult to convince many consumers to give up online grocery shopping or streaming movies at home or doing workouts from home, and head out to grocery stores, movie theaters, and gyms. As a recent McKinsey & Co survey concluded: “Most digital and contactless services have seen increased adoption since April, with more than half of new and increased users reporting an intent to continue post-COVID-19.”
The point is that habits have changed so radically for significant numbers of people that there may well be little inclination for many to return to the old days of less than a year ago.
A similar mindset is at work in the Dynamics community. Online marketing has taken hold in a big way. Dynamics users have become even more accustomed to conducting solution research online — via attending webcasts, viewing product demo videos, and reading white papers. And increasingly they are seeking out independent information sites like MSDynamicsWorld.com (MSDW) for the content they need to make critical buying decisions.
All of which is a long way of saying that Dynamics ISVs not only need a digital strategy looking ahead to 2021, but such a strategy needs to be much more than an addendum to a conventional old-style marketing strategy — it needs to be the core of your marketing and sales plans for 2021 and beyond.
Here are four ways ISVs can achieve marketing success in 2021:
- Develop a plan to consistently create and pump out content. Create the types of content that your prospects are most likely to consume. In 2020, MSDW saw a massive shift towards videos, webcasts (simulive) and podcasts by people in the Dynamics channel, and we predict that this will only increase as we get into 2021 and beyond.
- Post and promote your content on sites that can actually capture the information of people who consume it. Do not waste your time and resources creating content and posting it on platforms that provide little or no data about who is consuming it. If you don’t know who exactly is consuming your content, you can’t A) follow up with those people, and B) know which type of content is actually working well to attract your prospects.
- Fine-tune your messaging so it’s more targeted and will immediately gauge the interest of your prospects. To ensure consumption by your prospects, you want to follow the MSDW “Content Consumption Equation”.Ten years ago, ISVs could get away with using a simple formula to ensure that people consumed their content. As long as the piece of content focused on these two elements, the probability of consumption was high;
Dynamics Product (DP) + Solution Focus Area (S) = Consumption
We’ve seen this evolve many times over the past decade, and now, ISVs will need to add even more elements to the consumption equation in order for their message to cut through the noise;
DP + S + Industry (I) + Dynamics Role (partner, user) (DR) + Job Function (JF) + Purchase Cycle Stage (PCS) = Consumption
The key is to create content that is so incredibly targeted, it’s 100% obvious to your prospects that it’s for them and in their best interest to consume it. It’s a perfect way for you to cut through all the noise that your prospects are being inundated with on a daily basis.
- Resist the temptation to invest heavily in traditional marketing vehicles, such as in-person trade shows, if and when they come back. 2020 has proven that you don’t need to spend tons of money on traditional marketing vehicles in order to be successful. More information is available to your prospects online than ever before, and the amount of digital content being consumed will only continue to increase.
Since 2008, MSDW has developed and offered the most innovative digital lead generation programs for Dynamics ISVs. Let us help you put together and execute an effective digital marketing strategy for 2021.
